


amnesia is a soldier's best friend

by sapphfics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Amnesia, Character Study, Clary Fray-centric, F/F, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 23:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18766972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics
Summary: The first thing Clary remembers is the cold wind hitting her face. Her skirt is too short for this weather, and she stares down at herself in these unfamiliar clothes, and wonders:Why am I standing outside a Church?Or: What happens after Clary wakes up outside a church in a party dress and no memories?





	amnesia is a soldier's best friend

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this post](https://quitereal.tumblr.com/post/184705715292/also-the-night-clary-lost-her-memories-wtf)

_I cast off my identity_

_And make the fatal plunge._

— Family Reunion, Sylvia Plath

* * *

  
The first thing Clary remembers is the cold wind hitting her face. Her skirt is too short for this weather, and she stares down at herself in these unfamiliar clothes, and wonders: _Why am I standing outside a Church?_

The Church is entirely dark, yet still eerie. Clary is reminded of the one her mother used to bring her to on her father’s birthday, and she remembers holding her mother’s hand as she cried. They left flowers at an empty grave because there was no body to bury. All that was left of him was a lock of his hair, that her mother kept hidden away in a safe like some terrible secret.

When she was five and staying home sick, Clary remembers ripping up the apartment looking for that box, because her mother wouldn’t even tell her how her father died. She remembers finding it weird that her father’s hair was blond, and then she felt an overwhelming sadness, because there really was nothing of her father left, not even in her.  
Luke had found her still crying, and he wasn’t angry with her, he just held her in his arms until she stopped shaking.

“I wish you were my real dad,” Clary had whispered. “Then Mommy might not be so sad all the time.”

“Your Mom might get sad sometimes, but I know she wouldn’t change a thing,” Luke tells her. “Because it got her you. And she loves you, more than anything, and so do I.”

“Did you know my real dad, Luke?” Clary had asked. She was desperate for anything about him, anything at all.

“He was my best friend,” Luke had replied, and Clary had never seen him look so upset. “He loved you, and he loved your mom.”

“Then why did he leave?”

Luke couldn’t answer her.

She looks at the windows, seeing a flash of her own face, her hair done up so nicely she couldn’t have done it herself. She doesn’t have her phone, her wallet, or any ID. She wonders if she was robbed. 

She can’t escape the feeling that she is being watched, somehow, so walks quickly away.

Her heels click along the pavement, but she goes unnoticed by the crowds among her, even though she must look a mess. Her feet ache, and she’s got bruises from something she doesn’t remember.

 _I’ll worry about that all later,_ she thinks, _I just need to get home to Mom._

She stops when she sees herself on a missing poster. The poster has been vandalised, though. Someone scrawled ‘Valentine’s hell spawn’ on it in paint. She wants to cry, even though she has no idea who Valentine is, because her mother always told her that her father’s name was Johnathan.

  
She starts running, faster than she’s ever run before. She doesn’t know where she’s been, but she knows her Mom must have been worried sick about her. Her Mom will hold her so tightly and Clary won’t ever want her to let go.

  
She walks into her burned down apartment and screams until a neighbour calls the police.

  
-:-

  
The officer, a friend of Luke’s, informs her of their theory that Luke killed her mother, burned down the house, and killed himself.

Clary doesn’t believe him, but she isn’t sure what’s real anymore.

“We thought he got you too,” The police officer tells her, solemnly. “Glad you’re okay.”

Clary is the furthest she has ever been from okay, but she won’t tell anyone that.

“Did you...is my mom buried somewhere? Can I see her?”

The officer just sighs, pityingly. “We think her body was destroyed in the fire.”

Clary chokes back her own tears, because she’ll find time to cry when she’s got a roof over her head.

She has to go and find Simon, but the officer is kind enough to give her money for the journey. 

-:-

  
But Simon’s house isn’t his house anymore.

The new owners look rather shocked when she turns up on their doorstep.

“Hi, I’m Clary Fray,” She starts. “I’m looking for Simon, do you know where he is?”  
“Simon Lewis?” The stranger asks.

“Yes, him!” Clary replies. “Is he not here?”

“I’m so sorry Clary, but Simon Lewis has been dead for a year. His family moved to Florida.”

To her credit, Clary doesn’t collapse on their doorstep. She clenches her fists, turns away, and silently cries on the way back.  
-:-

Thank every deity that might exist for Maureen.

Maureen hugs her, and says “I missed you so much, where did you go?” and Clary can’t give her an answer. Maureen lives alone now, and Clary is grateful. She misses Dot, but Dot is gone, too.

“I keep...seeing things,” Clary comments when Maureen cracks open a bottle of wine to celebrate her return. “Like when I was a kid, but I think they’re real. It’s terrifying.”

“What kind of things?”

“Children with horns, people with weird tattoos, weapons that don’t exist...I don’t know, after that night at the club I can’t tell what’s real anymore.”

Maureen books her an appointment with a doctor the next day.

-:-

The medicines work during the day, but every once in a while, Clary will wake up to find she’s filled an entire sketchbook with drawings of things she’s hallucinating. She isn’t really asleep, though, it’s as if her mind is elsewhere, like someone else stepped into her body.

“You never did tell me where you got those neck tattoos,” Maureen says. “They look cool.”

“I don’t remember,” Clary says. “I don’t remember anything.”

Sometimes, she will write things next to the drawings. Names of people, names she can’t remember. _Jace, Isabelle, Alec, Magnus, Maia, Lydia, Valentine, Sebastian, Johnathon._ The faces come to her fully formed, she doesn’t have to imagine anything. Her drawings of Johnathan somehow frighten her, even though he looks more like her father than she ever could.

She supposes she should be grateful for having such an overactive imagination, because she uses those drawings as her portfolio to get into art school.

-:-

She gets top marks in every class, but she still feels there’s a hole in her. There’s a small part of her that is telling her she’s being punished.

Her doctor theorises she might have gone through something so traumatic her mind has blocked it out entirely, but she can’t imagine what it could have been.

Her life is so mundane, isn’t it?

”You were gone for so long,” Her doctor says. “They almost gave up hope of finding you.”

“They didn’t find me,” Clary reminds him. “Whatever happened, I got out on my own.”

It’s for the best if she’s on her own. That way, no one else will get hurt.

-:-  
She has nightmares, but she doesn’t wake up screaming. She wakes up feeling entirely empty, with voices of the people in her dreams whispering in her head.

The cruelest voices are the ones who tell her they love her, because where are they now? Why would they leave her all alone like that? Is everyone just destined to leave her or die?

She can’t answer any of those questions, so she exhausts herself by drawing those faces, smiling up at her, until her hand cramps.

The tattoo on her neck burns.

**Author's Note:**

> ...sorry if this sucked i just have A Lot of feelings about clary so...have word vomit


End file.
